Northwestern spotlights Fitz, Collins in new campaign

A billboard featuring Northwestern football head coach Pat Fitzgerald.

Most Northwestern sports fans know Pat Fitzgerald and Chris Collins as the Chicago-area natives who are the faces of the school's athletic program. Now NU wants to make sure everyone else knows it, too.

Building off the school's long-running "Chicago's Big Ten Team" marketing campaign, the Wildcats' head football and men's basketball coaches will be the focal point of a yearlong advertising push highlighting their hometown history.

TV and digital ads starting today tell Fitzgerald's story as an Orland Park native and former NU football star. Closer to basketball season, ads will focus on Collins' background as a former Illinois "Mr. Basketball" at Glenbrook North High School. The #HOMEGROWN campaign is beginning as the athletic department lays the groundwork for season ticket sales this summer and fall.

The TV ads will be on the Big Ten Network and CSN Chicago. Billboards around Chicago will feature the campaign, including ads in high-traffic areas like the Loop and at Ogilvie Transportation Center, and on public transit signage.

It's a move to seize the momentum Northwestern sports generated over the past year with headline-grabbing seasons for each of the school's revenue-making teams. The Cats upset Pittsburgh in the Pinstripe Bowl, and the men's basketball team celebrated its first NCAA tournament appearance and win in March.

While trumpeting all things purple as evangelists for NU sports is already as central to both coaches' jobs as player recruitment, the school hopes putting them front and center in ads will tap into Chicago sports fans' local pride even if those fans don't feel connected to Evanston.

"We have to continue to try and nurture new fans and introduce them to our programs, and have them hopefully over time garner an emotional attachment" to them, said Mike Polisky, deputy director of athletics for external affairs. "We want to introduce our brand and our programs and our coaches who we're so proud of to more people, who as of now don't have that relationship with Northwestern athletics."

Spending for the campaign is on par with previous years, Polisky said. The #HOMEGROWN campaign comes two months after NU announced long-term contract extensions for both coaches at an event in downtown Chicago. That's where Athletic Director Jim Phillips, who called the two coaches "the emotional and financial engine" of the school's athletic department, brought up the idea among staff of building a campaign around them.

Here's one TV spot that came from that:

Highlighting the coaches' local ties in ads also helps NU keep away from the slippery area of using athletes to help sell tickets. That has become an extra-sensitive subject since members of the NU football team put the school's marketing tactics on display nationally three years ago when they unsuccessfully tried to unionize.

Gone are the days of putting specific players on billboards like NU did in 2011 with quarterback Dan Persa to promote him as a Heisman Trophy candidate.

The school still singles out top athletes to garner media attention like it did last year with gimmicks for former linebacker Anthony Walker Jr. and point guard Bryant McIntosh. And NU athletes will play a role in the #HOMEGROWN campaign, though they won't be as blaring as having their faces on massive billboards overlooking the Kennedy Expressway.

NU will produce video features on top football and basketball athletes who grew up in the Chicago area and a yearlong series featuring Wildcat athletes from the Chicago area across all of its sports teams.